The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Solemnity, August 15

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on August 15th, is one of the oldest and most universally observed feasts in the entire Christian calendar, keeping alive since the earliest centuries the Church's faith that Mary, the Mother of God, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory at the end of her earthly life. This feast, which has been celebrated in both East and West since at least the fifth century, received its most solemn doctrinal definition when Pope Pius XII declared it a dogma of the Catholic faith on November 1, 1950.

The dogmatic definition states that the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death. The definition deliberately leaves open the question of whether Mary died before being assumed or whether she was assumed without dying, though the ancient tradition of the Dormition holds that she fell into a sleep of death before being raised.

The theological foundations of the Assumption are rooted in Mary's unique relationship with Christ. She who bore the body of the Son of God in her womb, who nurtured it, who stood at the foot of the Cross as it was lifted up, could not fittingly remain separated from that glorified body in the Resurrection. Her Immaculate Conception had preserved her from the corruption of sin; her Assumption preserved her body from the corruption of the grave. She is the first fruits of the Resurrection after her Son, the pledge and the image of what awaits all who are united to Christ.

The feast is celebrated with great solemnity throughout the Catholic world, with processions, special Masses, and in many places the blessing of herbs and flowers, an ancient custom associating the fragrance of the natural world with the beauty and purity of the Mother of God. In many countries August 15th is a public holiday, and the great Marian shrines draw enormous crowds of pilgrims on this day.